


Chiasmus

by historymiss



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/M, now they kissin, spoilers for harrow the ninth - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:21:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25745779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: If she closes her eyes, she can imagine Cytherea, here, alive. Cyrus. Cassiopeia. All the saints that have served and died, the cavaliers living under their skin, a matched set of soldiers and ghosts that has culminated, alas, in two children, a walking stress headache, and the embodiment of the wordlouche.
Relationships: Mercymorn the First/Augustine the First
Comments: 3
Kudos: 48





	Chiasmus

Mercymorn has never really held with nostalgia. Longing for the past does no good: everything she loved has pretty much gone up in flames or crumbled to dust, by now, and what replaced it is… less than satisfying. A infant swaddled in ripped bedsheets, daubed with her own blood and vomit. A girl, barely older, with one bum arm and delusions of grandeur. Looking at them always sends the beginnings of a tension headache sparking through her skull.

And then, of course, there’s Augustine.

Fucking Augustine.

Their first night back in the Mithraeum, Mercymorn finds herself in the training room. She used to spar with the others here, physically, verbally, as iron sharpens iron. Her breath catches when she steps through, as it has in every room she’s visited so far.

It smells the same, dust and old bones. The faintly sour scent of flowers on the edge of decay, losing their sweetness to death. 

If she closes her eyes, she can imagine Cytherea, here, alive. Cyrus. Cassiopeia. All the saints that have served and died, the cavaliers living under their skin, a matched set of soldiers and ghosts that has culminated, alas, in two children, a walking stress headache, and the embodiment of the word _louche_.

He’s here, of course. Mercymorn just doesn’t deign to notice him until he sends a weary plume of smoke out of his nostrils, like a debonair dragon, and drawls:

“If you’ve come to swap, I’m afraid I’m invoking the sacred rite of no backsies.”

She shows him her teeth. It isn’t a smile. “Hilarious. You know, seconds go by when I don’t think about you or the children.” 

Augustine raises an eyebrow, leans back against the edge of a rack of swords, his body one long, elegant line. Mercymorn puts her hand against the skull of some long-dead Second hero instead, runs her finger along the groove of the House number in the bone. 

“I hate this place.” The sudden vehemence seems to shock him, as if after ten thousand years there’s still something she can say that hasn’t passed between them already. As if he hasn’t heard it before. Maybe it’s just that this is the last time he’ll hear it, and somehow, they both know. “I hate it each time we return, and it’s bigger. I hate the empty rooms. I hate the bones, people laid out like fucking decoration, I hate coming back and knowing that the only face I’ll recognise aside from his is _yours_.”

Augustine flicks ash from the end of his cigarette. He doesn’t look up, just follows the trajectory of the fine, gray dust with his brother’s eyes. Mercymorn has often wondered if, had they swapped places, the other brother would be more bearable. 

“Sic transit gloria mundi and all that, I suppose.” He quirks a brow as Mercymorn draws closer. She seems to draw the light to her - what little light there is. They used to meet like this all the time. Decades ago. They had shared something, then - call it hope, maybe. Something more fragile and easily crushed than love, more painful and bitter than hate. It had died as it fell, shrieking, to the ground, a comet colliding with the house of the Ninth, and it has sat like a stone in her chest ever since.

Mercymorn has been tired for ten thousand years.

She grabs Augustine’s chin, forces her fingers around his jaw, and kisses him. His eyes widen in shock, and probably, fear. Her tongue probes his mouth, desperate, and even that is the same as it ever was. It tastes the same. Like Frenching an ashtray.

When she draws back, he drags his sleeve across his mouth and coughs, politely. Adjusts his tie.

“Well.” He looks up and smooths colourless hair back against his skull, perhaps hoping that if he presses just a little harder he can nudge his brain back into some semblance of coherency. “Here we are again, then. The usual rules apply?”

Mercymorn shrugs. Why should this time be different? The children change nothing. Except-

“To the death, I think, Augustine.”

He smiles, a little, and this, at least, is something new.

“To the death.”


End file.
